in which he had found her and now, with the swift series of
tableaux conjured up by Sam's suggestion of her and Westlake together,
lovers, Sandy realized the gap that was widening between Molly and him.
If she was out of the rut would she not now regard him as in another of
his own from which there was no up-lifting?

To Sandy, Westlake seemed little more than a likable lad, placing him at
about twenty-three or four. He felt immeasurably older, harder, though
there were not more than six years between them--seven at the most. Even
that made him almost twice the age of Molly. With this twist of his
reverie he realized that Molly was no longer to be considered as a girl.
Toward the little maid he had poured out protectiveness, affection and,
while his vials were emptying, she had crossed the brook. Into what had
his affection shifted with the changing of Molly to womanhood?

Sandy Bourke, knight of the roving heel, had never attempted to find
solution for his attitude toward women. It was neither wariness nor
antipathy. His life, drifting from rancho to rancho, sometimes
consorting with the rougher side of men careless of conventions, had
been, in the main, not unlike the life of a hermit, with long periods
when he rode alone under sun and stars with only his horse for company.

There were months of this and then came swiftly moving periods of
relaxation in a cattle town where men unleashed the repressions and let
pent-up energies and appetites have full sway. Sandy loved card chances
where his own skill might back what luck the pasteboards brought him in
the deal. Drinking bouts, the company of the women with whom many of his
fellows consorted, never appealed to him. His reservations found outlet
in gambling or in the acceptance of some job where the danger risks ran
high, where success and self-safety hung upon his coolness, his keen
sense, his courage and his skill with horse and lariat and gun. A life
as apart as a sailor's, more lonely, for he was often companionless for
months.

So far he had never felt lack of anything, least of all lately, with the
two men he liked best in active partnership with him, with a maturing
interest in the development of his ranch and his grade of cattle by
modern methods. But, to have Molly not come back, or, returning, to have
her wooed and won, entirely absorbed by some one like Westlake, struck
him with a sense of impending loss that amounted to a real pain,
difficult of self-diag